New Bank Regulation Law – a joke??

Once again, I am impressed with local columnist, Ed Wallace.  He has insight and perspective which I do not find in the main stream media.  His latest column entitled “Nothing has Changed” deals with banking reform, or the lack thereof.  Although Congress recently passed what it calls “sweeping reform” of the banking industry, that is a false statement according to Mr. Wallace: “During the Great Depression, when Glass-Steagall became the law of the land, commercial banks were given only two years to divest themselves of their investment arms — their gambling casinos. The recent reform act allows today’s biggest banks up to 12 years to do the same.  This new “reform” act is no threat to Wall Street’s way of business. For proof one has only to put last week’s headlines into sequence.

On June 27, Bloomberg reported that more families in the U.S. were made homeless in 2009. On June 30 the Pew Research Center released its latest study, showing that this downturn has hit fully half of the families in America with unemployment, cut wages, reduced work hours or taking part-time jobs.  That same day, Federal Reserve officials said our high unemployment would last for years. But sandwiched between our new homeless rate and the Pew and Fed reports was the story that Wall Street has just achieved its fastest hiring rate since early 2008. Why? Because their business is back; our economy’s near meltdown has resulted in not one major change.”  He then goes on to cite the recent IPO of electric car maker, Tesla as an example of the Wall Street hype machine and how it assures that insiders get rich at the expense of the naive public. 

Here is a link to this interesting article: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/09/2325191/nothing-has-changed.html  

Michael